A new study published in The Royal Society, shows that Nile Crocodiles are particularly adept at sensing distress in human babies.

This really makes that scene in The Prince of Egypt when baby Moses floats down the Nile even more terrifying than it already was.

The study summarized the findings saying,

Here we found through playback experiments that Nile crocodiles are attracted to infant hominid cries (bonobo, chimpanzee and human)

...

Our results suggest that crocodiles are sensitive to the degree of distress encoded in the vocalizations of phylogenetically very distant vertebrates.

Crocodiles seem to be uniquely able to perceive distress in the cries of infants, even more than other wildlife that are known to sense fear.

Or perhaps it's just that crocodiles are more terrifying and cause more distress. At least, that's what I think. Either way, you won't see me floating a baby down the Nile in a basket anytime soon.

The study went on to say,

A comparison of these results with those obtained with human subjects confronted with the same stimuli further indicates that crocodiles and humans use different acoustic criteria to assess the distress encoded in infant cries. Interestingly, the acoustic features driving crocodile reaction are likely to be more reliable markers of distress than those used by humans.

To summarize, a crocodile is more in tune with an infant's distress than a mom, and I think that's pretty terrifying.